eggs and our pubescent chickens

About 10 days ago, the hens began a 2-day squawking and cackling festival. They were LOUD. We knew something was up, and it turns out, someone was fixing to lay an egg. When she did, rather than use the laying boxes Jason had built, she decided a cozier spot was here, wedged between a pile of fencing, a prickly broom, and a paper sack.


Now then. That first paragraph might sound all cool and relaxed, but the truth is we were out of our minds with joy when we found this egg. Watching the chickens and Zoralee and more recently our plants grow this spring, we keep having these surges of surprise over the natural life process. "Things are doing what they're supposed to do!" we keep saying. "That's insane!" We don't know what we ever did to deserve chickens who actually lay eggs, but it's witnessing a small miracle every morning.

Here we are exploring and tenderly loving our first egg.

We had learned that as the chickens got sexually mature, their combs and waddles would grow and become bright red instead of pale pink, and sure enough, we'd been observing it for a couple of weeks in our chickens before the first egg came. Again, we were incredulous that what we'd been reading about actually happened. See here the comparison between two hens at different stages (photos taken on the same day):

On day 2, we got another single egg on pellets Jason had laid in the box. But the weirdest thing is that the inside of an egg (no shell) had fallen from a chicken while she roosted at night. It was in the poop box below. This whole thing has the feel of chickens going through puberty. Hormones are all weird, they're laying eggs evidently on accident at night. Just like a period. We are so proud of them. They are growing up.

So, Jason filled the laying boxes with hay and shaped nests to make them more inviting. We set the mature hens in the boxes, to show them how lovely they were. The next day, there was another single egg, and this time it was nestled into the hay in a box! The next day there were two eggs in one box, the next day three.

What you see below is one of our eggs on the right and an average-sized grocery store egg on the left. Ours are starting out small, as is typical. They will grow in size and keep that rich coloring, an indication of their good diet.

Yesterday, we got four eggs (Gosh, it's cool!!) and found one of these water balloon, shell-less eggs. Here's a photograph, though by today the moisture has started to seep out of the membrane. Evidently this happens occasionally while the hens' bodies are still adjusting to egg-making. We are NOT eating this thing; it's right out of Alien World.

As you can see, we're pleased as punch about our eggs. They're little packets of protein, dude, in a protective shell that our chickens push out as little love gifts to us! It's just nuts.

company

Our family reunion (for my maternal grandpa and grandma's families) starts Sunday afternoon, so people are starting to arrive from out of town. Yee-haw! One of the best parts of hanging out with relatives now is everyone meeting, fawning over, and commenting on the ever-expanding wardrobe (ever-expanding, in part, due to their bringing her things!) of the first baby we've had in our immediate and pretty immediate family in over a decade. That'd be Zoralee. Besides the joy of simply having a baby around, we're also reaping the health benefit of building our immunities by exposure to each other's germs via her ears. What did we ever do for fun and health before her?!

Zoralee doesn't hand out smiles willy-nilly. She is a very cautious girl and looks a person over real good before deciding on her excitement level. She has a long week of decisions ahead of her.

"Story Time With Zoralee"

(practicing for her syndicated talk show)

We also just got to spend two days with Cousin Autumn, from my dad's Alaska side of the fam. Gosh, it was good to see her! This is a girl with whom many of our travels and adventures and dreamings are intertwined. She is a kindred spirit in so many ways. Crud, we've plunged ourselves into glacially-fed rivers for the shock of it (stupid), spent days and nights and days and nights hiking through the Alaskan wilderness (rad), dug ditches for water lines in the sweltering Guatemalan heat (jewel in crown), dreamed of communal living, sustainability, building cob houses, and running hostels (coffee-induced highs). Can you imagine how thrilled we were to see her? Can you imagine what a drag it was to let her go this morning? Booooooo for that!

Luke and Rachel both think Zoralee looks quite a bit like her.

family look-alikes

And while I'm on the subject of family look-alikes, I'll post a pic of Jason's niece, Ashley, who I've personally seen the most of in Zoralee since she was born. This is Ashley's high school graduation three years ago.

Zoralee and Great-grandpa Gene seem to be a favorite family-wide comparison, especially the backs of their heads. (Note the hair ribbons in this shot.)

love you, Pops

happy day of fathers to my main man

I love you, Baby.

You kick pants at being a Papa.
Happy first Father's Day.

gardening so far...dening

You may recall the utter flop that was our attempt at gardening last year. Or not. It wasn't particularly memorable. We set up a nice garden spot and did all the appropriate digging and dirt-moving and manure-adding we could, but the water we sprinkled on it wouldn't go away. A couple of local experts said we had a streak of nasty clay running through the property and that we were best off to forget about it and just haul in good dirt.

So, we canned the garden last year, and not in the traditional sense of harvesting bountiful bushels of colorful fruits and vegetables, cutting them into bits, and trapping them in glass jars with a pressure cooker to eat throughout the winter. I mean "canned" like threw in the towel. By then we were out of time, money, and motivation. (Those three scoundrels frequently run out of our lives together, holding hands, just when we need them the most.)

But this year is going to be different, we are saying. We have gone a whole new direction: Square Foot Gardening. And to keep in tradition with other new directions, we have a book as a souveneir:

It really is a fascinating concept. SQGs take up about 20% of the space of row gardens and take only a fraction of the labor and ongoing maintenance - after you get the boxes built. You fill the boxes with the dirt mixture that Mel Bartholomew recommends, which is a one-time cost, and then you simply update your soil with compost. This sounds more like us! What do we know though? We haven't succeeded at any growing much yet, other than one dog and one baby and now some chickens. Okay, and our love. And our waistlines. Dang. We've grown a lot. But to illustrate my point, the last time we attempted a quasi-garden was in Alaska when Steve came over to our cabin and planted carrots. All we had to do was water them. Easy, right? At season's end, we pulled at their beautiful green tops, and out of the earth came one-inch miniature carrots.

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Jason and I actually have lots of gardening in our family roots (pun fully intended), but this year is our first serious go at it for ourselves as adults. Here's Jason building the boxes and attaching black paper to the bottoms to keep weeds at bay.

My job was to mix up the dirt recipe and fill the boxes. I recruited Brother Dave to help.
We still had a bunch of seeds I'd ordered last year from Amishland Heirloom Seeds, and then Jason ordered a bunch more from the Good Seed Company, which specializes in cold-hearty plants. Both companies are dedicated to heirloom seeds, which means they are not genetically modified to be only one-generation plants. You can harvest the seeds off this year's plants and use them next year. Anyway, those very special old-fashioned seeds sat in our fridge full of energy and potential, waiting for someone to plant and nurture them into life-giving food. But instead, we came along. [The Benny Hill Show theme music plays.] In late April and early May, we planted brocolli, brussels sprouts, sage, and cabbage indoors. This, in plain old seed-starting soil. Watered them. Loved them. Wished them to grow. Out of 80 or 100 little plastic, squared "pots" grew a handful of measly, pathetic seedlings.

Our friends, Jese and Nikki, ordered seeds from the Good Seed Company about the same time and had great success. We were so jealous! They're starting a community garden, so blessings are being showered down upon them. Actually, the main difference in their procedures and ours was the light bulbs. Tip: you've gotta use the ones with labels that refer to "growing things." Doh.

We did plant our few piddly seedlings into the garden, and within a few days, strong winds destroyed them. Another note to selves: wait and transplant strong plants, not just ones with a couple of true leaves. So two weeks ago we essentially started over with a new batch of seeds, and by then we had to plant different things - tomatoes, peppers, basil. I also direct seeded into the garden winter squash, zucchini, cucumber, three lettuce varieties, beets, and sugarsnap peas. We had some elephant garlic bulbs from the same Steve (and wife Darla) who'd planted us carrots before, and those are coming up beautifully! Jese and Nikki were overrun with successful plants, so they gave us some cabbages and tomatoes transplants. They are what makes our garden look like, well, a garden.

It's a rough start to our second year's attempt. But we're still going and learning a lot, typically by mistakes. For instance, within days of planting cucumbers and winter squash in the same 4x4 foot box (albeit not in squares directly beside each other), a lady I know said we'd better keep all gourd varieties separated from one another or we risked cross-polination. Dangit! So I carefully dug up my cucumber seeds, which were barely starting to sprout, and moved them to another box. I keep thinking how lucky we are to have time for mistakes, as opposed to homesteaders in a remote wilderness.

The main box we planted seems to have an inordinant amount of ant visitors too, which is disconcerting.

Have you noticed the holes in the leavery, perchance,

Measured and cut by protractor-legged ants?

Yes, I've got those same ants back home in my yard

And to keep them from working is hard.

I visit our garden every morning, often wearing Zoralee on my back. It is a sweet time of day for us. Near dawn a few mornings ago, I caught some images of dew drops on the cabbage.

What will happen next? Will edible things grow? If so, brother, we will be walking on sunshine.

Fun fact: as I wrote part of this post about gardening in northern Montana in June, I listened to a Mexican Salsa Christmas cd. Zoralee needed something peppy, and it was there.

when diaper free time goes terribly wrong

The picture is small so it doesn't catch you too off guard, which means you can't see it on her sleeper, socks, leg warmers, etc. That's probably for the better.

temporary wackiness

I'm fiddling around with the format of my blog, y'all. If it looks funny for a few minutes, right now at like 10 p.m. in Montana, don't panic!

Can't seem to write these days.

I keep starting and not finishing.

But oh yeah, pictures.

curds and whey

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet

Eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider and sat down beside her

And chased Little Miss Muffet away.

Who knows what curds and whey are? I sure didn't, though I used to say the nursery rhyme with as much gusto as the next beanpole legged girl. It was while I was looking at a homemade ravioli recipe online the other day that I learned.

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Evidently you can make your own ricotta-like cheese with reconstituted dry milk (why not just wet milk to begin with? - who knows.), vinegar, and sea salt. At the end of the making process, you've got curds and whey: coagulated cheese in water. You drain the whey, or water, and you're left with the curds. I am EXCITED to know this, for a reason I can't quite put my finger on.

Now then. What the devil is a tuffet?